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Feb. 19, 2016

Students Jerry Middlemiss and Chelsea Titchenell rehearse “Tigers Be Still,” which will have its Rhode Island premiere next month at CCRI.

The CCRI Players will present Kim Rosenstock’s play “Tigers Be Still,” a story about characters afflicted by forms and stages of depression, for the first time in Rhode Island next month.

Central character Sherry, who finally secured a teaching job after months of looking and a subsequent bout with depression that left her unable to leave her bedroom, is surrounded by four people with dysfunction more profound than hers. There’s her older sister, Grace, whose impending marriage of crashed and burned and who now leads a semi-comatose existence on the couch, watching and re-watching “Top Gun” with a bottle of Jack Daniels. Their mother has withdrawn to her upstairs bedroom, embarrassed by a significant weight gain and unwilling to be seen even by her daughters — let alone the audience: She phones them to talk. Joseph Moore, Sherry’s awkward school principal, was her mom’s prom date and has an ulterior motive for hiring Sherry. His 19-year-old son, Zack, has been having outbursts of anger since his mother’s death.

And then there’s a tiger on the loose from the local zoo has the local citizenry on 24-hour alert. But the tiger – an invisible character who shapes the action – is the embodiment of everyone’s angst, in need of being stilled.

The production is directed by Professor Bert Silverberg. Set design is by Luke J. Sutherland, with costume design by Marilyn Salvatore, lighting design by Tyler Perry, sound design by Kaisey Caputo and technical direction by Justin C. Carroll. The student cast includes: Chelsea Titchenell of Coventry; Jerry Middlemiss and Nicholas P. Menna of Warwick; and Julia Egan of Cranston. Understudies are Katie Westgate of Rumford, Michael Christian of Warwick; Destinée Mangum of Providence; and Yunus Quddus of Pawtucket. Brayam Renovales of Providence is the stage manager, assisted by Kat Brown of West Greenwich.

Show times are 7:30 p.m. March 3 to 5 and 2 p.m. March 5 and 6 in the Bobby Hackett Theater at the Knight Campus in Warwick. Admission costs $10 or $8 for students and senior citizens. For reservations, call 401-825-2219.